Sonia Bianchetti Garbato

Sonia Bianchetti is a former International Skating Union (ISU) official and figure skating referee.

Skating career and personal life

Sonia Bianchetti Garbato was born in Italy in 1934 and started skating at six. Her competitive career lasted from 1948 to 1955, after which she retired. Later she got married and had two sons. Her son, Fabio Bianchetti, is an ISU official and a figure skating judge.

Career as judge and ISU official

In 1958 Bianchetti became a judge for the Italian skating federation, which was the beginning of her long career as a judge and skating official. She was the first woman to be appointed referee at an ISU championship, to be elected to the ISU Figure Skating Technical Committee, first to become its chairperson and first to be elected to the ISU Council. As an official, Bianchetti participated in many reforms of figure skating as a sport, but the reform with which she is most widely associated is the elimination of compulsory figures from elite competitions.

Post-ISU career and criticism of the new judging system

Bianchetti's career at ISU ended in 1992 with the election of Ottavio Cinquanta to the ISU council, since only one representative of each country could serve on the council. She was one of the officials of the World Skating Federation (WSF), an attempt to replace ISU which did not prove successful. However, she remained an active observer and critic of the skating world. In particular, she remains a vocal critic of the new ISU Judging System, focusing especially on the secret voting of the judges and on the decline of the artistic component of skating through too much emphasis on the difficulty of the skaters' positions. In 2004 Bianchetti published Cracked Ice, a memoir of her years as a judge and an official.